Amherst College - agriculturehttps://www.amherst.edu/taxonomy/term/2564
enA Ton of Watermelon: Book & Plow's First Harvesthttps://www.amherst.edu/news/archives/campusbuzz/node/508557
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p class="fine-print">by William Sweet</p>
<p>How local is locally-grown produce? At Amherst College it means you can barely break a sweat walking to where your salad came from.</p>
<p>This fall, the <a href="http://www.bookandplowfarm.com/">Book &amp; Plow Farm</a> began supplying Dining Services wth the fruits --and vegetables-- of its first harvest. </p>
<p>Farmers Peter McLean and Tobin Porter-Brown, with the help of students and other volunteers, kicked off the school year with a ton of watermelon, hundreds of pounds of kale, mustard, bok choi and tot soi, and pounds and pounds of tomatoes. Dining Services is also using carrots, onions, summer squashes and herbs from the farm.</p>
<p>Early this year, the college signed a lease with the pair to establish a farm that supplies Dining Services with produce. The for-profit operation sells crops to a few other customers, including some local restaurants and Hampshire College, but Amherst College is by far the largest customer and plays a large role in deciding what gets planted.</p>
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<p>“It’s a beautiful product,” said the college's Executive Chef Jeremy Roush. “They've been blessed with the right weather this year. The tomatoes have been like candy.”</p>
<p>Those involved say it’s been the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but a relationship which requires some flexibility and creativity, largely because the academic and agricultural years run practically on opposite schedules: Valentine Dining Hall shuts down for its big pre-Orientation cleaning just when harvest season is going gangbusters.</p>
<p>“We’re trying to extend the season in both directions as far as possible,” said McLean. “We’re trying to deliver food as far into December as we can, by growing things under plastic in the greenhouse, and we are going to plant some things in the fall that we know we won't be able to harvest until the spring.”</p>
<p>What the kitchen staff have not cooked up in a given week has been prepped and preserved for the weeks and months ahead. Which is the paradox: all this effort to go fresher has resulted in the top chef’s having to come up with more ways to preserve all that produce.</p>
<p>“When 200 pounds of kale comes in, you gotta do something with it,” said salad worker Bernadette Lynch, de-seeding a batch of the farm’s peppers. Rather than let pounds and pounds of basil, cilantro and dill go bad, they got prepping.</p>
<p>“The basil we preserved in olive oil, similar to a pesto; [with] the fresh dill we made a compound butter. Other herbs we dried over salt and infused the salt to make ‘herb salt’ for seasoning roasts and other items,” Roush said. “With tomatoes we made a classic puree to serve as a foundation for multiple other tomato-based sauces.”</p>
<p>All in all, they’ve prepared and frozen some 400 pounds of kale. They also blanched the braising greens and froze them to use as soup stock for the winter.</p>
<p>“Jeremy’s been really creative at how to extend the produce as long as possible,” said McLean. “On our end, we are growing frost-tolerant and hardy plants for the winter months.”</p>
<p>“This is the inaugural year, so obviously it's a very experimental year,” Roush said. “We are learning a great deal, working with new products, such as Komatsuna and Hakurei turnips. … This is a very exciting time for a chef.”</p>
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<p>There are products they won’t take, where good intentions run up against the fact that thousands of meals are served every day at Val. Garlic, because of the sheer volume in which it is used, still has to be bought peeled and chopped. Butternut squash, because it is labor-intensive to prepare, is purchased from larger farms in the Pioneer Valley.</p>
<p>McLean said the farm relies on the support of volunteers and student interns, who came out even during the blistering heat wave this summer. “These guys are great: super-spirited and super motivated. It didn’t matter how hot it was, they were up for it. We just bought the crew more popsicles.”</p>
<p>After all, Amherst students made this happen. A student group first approached the college’s administration in 2010 with the farm proposal. This grew into a committee of students, faculty and staff who solicited proposals from farmers wishing to lease land with “the dual goals of raising local produce and conducting educational and research programs that involve the entire College.” About a dozen farmers submitted proposals, and McLean and Porter-Brown were the top the choice.</p>
<p>“I think the Book &amp; Plow Farm is a great addition to what Amherst College already provides our students and community in the area of academics, social life and real-life experiences,” said Charles Thompson, director of dining services. “As for the dining program: we’ve long been a big supporter of local businesses and sustainable goods, so having our own farm on campus is about as good as it gets.”</p>
<p>Sure, sometimes the tomatoes are lumpy, and sometimes the red peppers are green. For those involved, supporting sustainability is worth some less-than-picture-perfect fruits and vegetables. For Roush, though, it all comes down to flavor.</p>
<p>“Some of the tomatoes that we had were not the prettiest, but what are you giving up? You might be giving up that polished pink-looking thing that is hard as a rock, for something that is rich, red, and juicy. The watermelon that we served for Orientation luncheon had some scarring on the rind, but once you cut it into wedges, you didn't have to worry about it, because the taste of it was so fantastic and so juicy. It’s just what it should be.”</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/10901">Farm</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/18563">farm-to-table</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/18557">Book and Plow Farm</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3324">dining services</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2442">valentine dining hall</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2995">locally grown</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2564">agriculture</a></div></div></div>Sat, 31 Aug 2013 11:43:36 +0000wsweet508557 at https://www.amherst.eduhttps://www.amherst.edu/news/archives/campusbuzz/node/508557#commentsAgricultural Environmentalist Wes Jackson To Speak at Amherst College March 24https://www.amherst.edu/news/news_releases/2004/03_2004/node/9231
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p class="fine-print">March 17, 2004<br>Director of Media Relations<br> 413/542-8417</p> <p class="text" align="left">AMHERST, Mass.-Wes Jackson, president of the Land Institute, will speak on "A False Hypothesis: Implications for Culture and Agriculture," on Wednesday, March 24, at 4:30 p.m. in Lecture Room 4 in the Merrill Science Center at Amherst College. Jackson's talk, sponsored by the Transdisciplinary Fund and Five-College Environmental Studies Seminar, is free and open to the public.<br><br> Born on the Kansas prairie, Jackson studied biology, botany and genetics. Formerly a professor of biology at Kansas Wesleyan University, Jackson established one of the nation's first environmental studies programs at California State University, Sacramento, where he became a tenured full professor. In 1976 he returned to Kansas to found the Land Institute, which is dedicated to "natural systems agriculture," an ecological model that combines the remarkable stability of the tallgrass prairie with a grain yield comparable to annual crops. <br><br> Jackson's writings include <em>Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place</em> (edited with William Vitek, 1996), <em>Becoming Native to this Place </em>(1994), and <em>Altars of Unhewn Stone </em>(1987).<em> Meeting the Expectations of the Land</em> (1984) was edited with Wendell Berry and Bruce Colman. <em>New Roots for Agriculture</em> (1980) outlines the basis for agricultural research at the Land Institute. <br><br> The work of the Land Institute has been featured extensively in the popular media, including <em>The Atlantic Monthly</em>, Audubon, "The NewsHour" on PBS and "All Things Considered" on NPR. <em>Life</em> magazine named Jackson one of 18 individuals it predicts will be among the 100 "most important Americans of the 20th century." Jackson is a recipient of the Pew Conservation Scholars award (1990) and a MacArthur Fellowship (1992). </p><p class="text" align="center">###</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/552">news releases</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2472">environmental studies</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2564">agriculture</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3368">wes jackson</a></div></div></div>Mon, 18 Jun 2007 18:56:17 +0000vrao109231 at https://www.amherst.eduAmherst College Satisfies its Sweet Tooth with Local Farm Products on Oct. 27https://www.amherst.edu/news/news_releases/2006/10_2006/node/8571
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p class="fine-print">October 24, 2006 <br>Director of Media Relations<br>413/542-8417 </p><p class="text">AMHERST, Mass.—On Friday, Oct. 27, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the upper terrace of Valentine Dining Hall, Amherst College, in association with the “Be a Local Hero, Buy Locally Grown” ™ program of Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA), will host a bevy of local farmers as part of the college’s family weekend activities. The event will provide Amherst students and their families with an opportunity to learn about and even sample a selection of the many goods that are grown, manufactured and produced in the Pioneer Valley.<br><br>Prominent among these is a variety of sugary treats that are sure to delight the college student’s palate. Warm Colors Apiary, a South Deerfield-based company that supplies Valentine with local honey, will educate students about beekeeping with an interactive display featuring live bees and different types of honey. Flayvors of Cook Farm will furnish five of its most popular ice cream flavors for a “make your own sundae” extravaganza, along with various cow-themed exhibit including cowbells and statuettes. Beth Cook, co-owner of the third generation farm in Hadley, provides Amherst’s co-op “Zü” house with its dairy products and is thrilled to be working further with Amherst College. The North Hadley Sugar Shack will represent Massachusetts’ strong but underappreciated maple industry with maple sugar candies. The event will also boast a cornucopia of colorful crops from prominent local farmers, such as flowering kale, exotic eggplant and log-grown shitake mushrooms.<br><br>CISA—a non-profit organization that unites local farmers, producers and consumers in an effort to preserve and promote community agriculture—began the “Be a Local Hero” Campaign in 1999 to advertise locally grown farm products and provide them with a wider consumer base. The initiative is the longest-running “buy local” program in the country, and Amherst College is excited to be contributing with this Family Weekend event. Debbie Omasta, the dining hall manager for Valentine, says that dining services aims for “student satisfaction” with the event. “The main purpose of hosting this is to let folks know that we do believe in this program and that we do our best to buy only the best local, high-quality items,” she says. Dan Conlon, co-owner of Warm Colors Apiary, appreciates the initiative that Amherst College takes in sustaining local agriculture. “Big schools can do a lot to support local farmers, and Amherst has really reached out to take the lead in that.” Conlon believes that participation from consumers like Amherst College is vital to the program because it “helps keep our farms going.”</p><p class="text" align="center">###</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/552">news releases</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2438">Pioneer Valley</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2442">valentine dining hall</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2561">food</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2562">farmers</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2563">CISA</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2564">agriculture</a></div></div></div>Thu, 14 Jun 2007 14:32:32 +0000daustin098571 at https://www.amherst.edu